| Andre Mommen: Re: Looking for relatives | Dear Matthew,
I do not know that person that went to SA.
A few years ago I met a man named (Steve?)Mommen from Durban, working at the university at that moment and occupied by his hobby that was soaring. (Are you his son?)He told me that all people named Mommen in SA had one ascendent, his overgrandfather, a certain Aloysius Mommen arriving by ship in South Africa having the proffesion of musician. The latter is a little bit particular. A fiddler? Maybe that M. was not a musician at all. Maybe that he had been a adventurer joining the Boers against the English. That was not exceptional for many young men were attempted by a trip to another part of the world. In The Hague in Holland the SA embassy did recruit them and maybe paid for the trip.And because of the language there was not a problem when joining a batalion commanded by a Boer.Maybe that, later on, he had become a fiddler playing in the villages or that he was a coffeehouse and honky-tonk musician.
M. left the Catholic Church for the English Church, Steve Mommen told me. Which is reasonable, because Dutch speaking people there were Calvinists and (still are?) not so openminded. A fiddler needs another church. After the settlement with the English this was not a treason anymore...
Was Mommen a relative of mine???? People with that name are few. Most of them are living in or their grandparents were born in Belgium, in the Flemish section near to the provincial towns of Hasselt, Diest. They were all peasants, cattle or horse merchants and mill-owners. My grandfather and father did the same businesses. They were agrarian entrepreneurs. Maybe that the Mommen that went to SA was such a kind of person with entrepreneurial skills having learnt playing an instrument during his military service. My father did the same in the 1920s, he played a clarinet and never fired a bullet or climbed a wall. If the SA Mommen had the same aptitudes and attitudes he would have been of any value to the Botha's.
The name Mommen appears for the first time around 1660. But there ar more variants on it, Mommens, Mommers etc. Mommen means somebody who is a tutor of a child in low age or a mental or otherwise handicaped person; maybe that it also means somebody in a village appointed for that task. In that case the profession is called Mommer or Momber or Mombaer. The end -s which can be joined in family names to the radix refers to "son of". Like in English.
In France, the eastern German-speaking part there is place named Mommenheim.
In Germany the variant of the name is usually Mommsen, and there are many of them. Appartenly is this variant derived from Mommensohn.
Sometimes this variant of Mommsen causes some confusion when visiting Germany. People think that I am a Mommsen too.
Greetings
Andre |
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